Spaghetti Squash With Mushrooms

I don’t like grocery shopping, like at all. People seem to lollygag while I’m on a mission. Road rage in the grocery store aisles? Maybe. Plus, it never fails that I always have at least one ingredient on my list that I can’t find or the store randomly decides to not stock.

After a long week last week, I avoided the dreaded grocery store . While I was happy to skip it, I quickly regretted it as soon as I tried to make dinner. Cereal for dinner it is. Don’t judge me. 😉 Cereal wasn’t going to cut it a second night in the row so I needed to make due with what I had in the fridge. I had recently bought a spaghetti squash and figured that today was the day to experiment with it. I grabbed a few other leftover ingredients and before I knew it I had a delicious dinner for two.

Brush the flesh of each half with 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil (total).

Season with salt and pepper.

Place the spaghetti squash, cut side down, on the prepared baking sheet and bake it in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes or until it’s fork tender. Your goal is to be able to scrape the flesh easily from the squash with a fork.

Once it’s cool enough to touch, scrape the squash (from each short end) until you reach its outer shell. Keep scraping in the same direction.

Meanwhile, in a medium skillet, over Medium heat, heat 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and cook the mushrooms, minced shallots, and minced garlic until the mushrooms are tender and the water that was released from the mushrooms has evaporated. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

To prepare each dish, season the spaghetti squash with salt and pepper to taste (if needed) and add it to your bowl.

Have you ever cooked with spaghetti squash? This was my first time and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s super easy to cook.

When you cook a potato the flesh comes out in a chunky crumbly way that is perfectly suited to be buried in butter, sour cream, and cheese. The magical spaghetti squash turns itself conveniently into, well, spaghetti. Sorta. You’d expect to cut chunks out of it, but instead shreds into little strings! That’s so cool.

It’s hard to explain how spaghetti squash tastes. I think that it’s like a lot of other squash in that it has a subtle flavor. Pasta usually does too. That makes both a fantastic medium to add other interesting things to. It’s an extremely versatile squash which is why it wasn’t a surprise to me that it would be a lovely compliment to the hearty mushrooms. The Parmesan cheese is a must-have here because its flavor and salty goodness also add a lot of great flavor.

Did I mention that this is a healthy dish? Oh yea. Bathing suit season is right around the corner. 😮 Plus, it’s super filling. That rarely happens with healthy meals.

I’m a big planner so I felt unsettled when I skipped my usual grocery store visit. I didn’t plan this spaghetti squash ahead of time, but it turned out to be an amazing vegetarian dish. Maybe planning is overrated? 😉

While I’m not fond of shopping in the supermarket, I do love going to our farmers market once a week, it’s so refreshing and personal, makes all the difference, which reminds me I should use spaghetti squash more often!

This is really cool, Tina! I don’t think I’ve ever tried spaghetti squash and I don’t fancy my chances at finding one anywhere around here, but I’m intrigued to try one some day. I love butternut squash, but it doesn’t do the spaghetti thing … dang!

Hehe I love cereal for dinner and totally not a fan of grocery shopping when it’s crazy busy that you have to dodge carts 😉 I am a big fan of spaghetti squash though and this dish looks awesome with all the mushrooms and cheese!:)